Make Those Grades
While Penelope Trunk's advice for college students ["Making the Grade," Jan.1, 2009] is sound overall, it seems intended for shy students who plan to end their education after receiving a B.A. or B.S. However, students' social skills often tend to be stronger than their other skills of reading, writing, evaluating data and debating a point. If students plan to enhance their earning power (especially in a weak job market) and go on to medical, professional or graduate school, then these latter skills and their grades do matter.
While joining a fraternity or sorority might be one way to form a social network, these organizations are often segregated by ethnicity and income. I would encourage students to also join clubs or teams where they learn to interact with other students who are not just like them. To learn to interact with different kinds of people is ever more important in a globalized world. To modify Trunk's advice: study hard but take time to meet new and different kinds of people.
Beth E. Notar
Trinity College, Hartford
What? Dickens Wrong?
While I am honored and take pride in being granted a "Halo" in your January 1-7, 2009 issue, the real recipient of your recognition should be the Hampden County Bar Association that created and has supported the Foreclosure Task Force that it has been my privilege to chair and its member attorneys who have volunteered their professional services to help individuals facing foreclosure. It is they who demonstrate that the organized bar, despite the erroneous perception of Dickens, are ready, willing and able to help those in need of legal assistance.
I thank you most sincerely on behalf of the Hampden County Bar Association, its Bankruptcy Committee and those many members and others who have demonstrated their concern about the foreclosure crisis by attempting to do something constructive about it.
Eugene B. Berman
Springfield
Forever Young
The Advocate's "Halos and Horns" article [Jan. 1, 2009] reminded me of my college self: generally outraged by the establishment for no articulated reason and happily unburdened by fact and reality.
Jennifer Dieringer
Northampton
(and Purgatory, by way of the Planning Board)
